Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Economic
1
2
3
4
a.1
a
b
Social
Environmental
a.2
Figure 1.2
The three dimensions of sustainability explained on a ternary diagram.
A central location of the sustainable company in Figure 1.2 indicates a balance of one-third
each of economic, social, and environmental components. So the question is: is this what it
takes to be sustainable? Unfortunately, it is not. It will depend on the business of each company.
Going back to the petroleum and mining industries, companies that rely exclusively on
nonrenewable materials are inherently nonsustainable from the environmental perspective.
They work with resources that are limited and increasingly difficult to extract, their impact on
environment is significant, and are resented to a great extent by many stakeholder groups
(society). So, no matter how many social contributions they make to mitigate their
environmental impact, these companies are destined to not to survive in the long term because
of their environmental unfeasibility.
In the case of food companies, true sustainability could be achieved only on the basis of
replacing materials and energy that are currently obtained from nonrenewable resources,
which can be a huge task. This comprises not only processing but also the whole supply chain,
including food production in the fields, transportation, distribution, and final disposal of
packaging material.
Shortcomings of three-dimensional representation
The weakness of portraying sustainability as a mix of three dimensions is that they are all
taken as interchangeable and of equal weight. From a business perspective, a perfectly valid
claim is that for the business to be sustainable all it needs is to make money. From whose who
are in defense of social views, the needs of people should be placed ahead of environmental
and economic aspects. The environment on the other hand has no voice, except when natural
disasters occur. What is forgotten is that the
environment is the ultimate system
that supports
both the social and economic systems (Fig. 1.3).
In fact, the social and economic systems are subsystems of the environmental system
(Fig. 1.4). In this context, a food company takes energy, water, minerals, and land from the
environmental system; labor from the social subsystem; and capital from the economic
subsystem. In return, the food company produces income for the employees and food for the
social subsystem; and the food company and employees pay taxes that benefit the economic
system (these taxes go back to the social subsystem in the form of education, social projects,
and infrastructure [public buildings, roads, bridges, and so on]).
